Choose Kingston's Quantity Surveying MSc

Quantity surveyors play a key role in the construction industry, ensuring that development costs are appropriately and accurately managed. Kingston University is a long-established Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors partnership university, and this course will equip you with the skills and knowledge to start you on a career that offers enormous scope for team working, travel and financial rewards.

Accreditation

This course is fully accredited by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB).

The MSc programme delivered at our partner institutions is not currently accredited by the RICS or CIOB.

What will you study?

This conversion masters provides an opportunity to graduates from disciplines other than surveying to convert their transferable skills and extend their abilities in a critical way to the quantity surveying profession. You will develop in-depth knowledge and understanding of procurement, construction contracts and their administration. You will acquire sound knowledge of construction economics and cost planning. The curriculum further places emphasis on the EU and UK legal framework relating to construction, sustainable construction technology and project management. In addition to the core taught modules, you will receive training on research methodology and undertake a dissertation (research project).

Assessment

Work placement scheme

Many postgraduate courses at Kingston University allow students to do a 12-month work placement as part of their course. The responsibility for finding the work placement is with the student; we cannot guarantee the work placement, just the opportunity to undertake it. As the work placement is an assessed part of the course, it is covered by a student's tier 4 visa.

Invoicing on the placement courses is split into two stages. The standard course fee is payable in year 1 with the placement fee invoiced in year 2. Therefore, students starting in September 2017 would therefore be charged the placement fee of £1,070 in September 2018. Students commencing the course in September 2018 will be invoiced the placement fee in 2019 (provisionally £1,230).

This amount will only be charged to your account after you find a placement and are enrolled on the module. You will not be charged this fee if you do not manage to secure a work placement.

Course structure

Please note that this is an indicative list of modules and is not intended as a definitive list. Those listed here may also be a mixture of core and optional modules.

Modules

Applied Sustainable Construction Technology and Measurement

Applied Sustainable Construction Technology and Measurement

This module aims to help you gain in-depth working knowledge of construction technology and a systematic understanding of regulatory and procedural matters relating to the sustainable construction of low and high rise buildings. The module further seeks to enable you to apply your developed construction technology background on the quantification of building work. You will gain working knowledge of the current methods of measurement and critical understanding of specifications. Delivery is by a series of lectures, tutorials and workshops. The module is assessed by two pieces of coursework and a written examination.

Contract Law Administration and Practice

The module aims to enable you to develop deep understanding and critical knowledge of the development process and the roles of key parties in procurement and contractual arrangements as they apply primarily in the UK construction industry. In addition, you will gain deep and broad knowledge of standard contract forms used in the UK and abroad and the legal duties and responsibilities of the parties involved in construction contracts. The module is taught by a series of lectures and tutorials and you will be expected to take an active part in applying your knowledge to worked examples within the tutorial format. Assessment will comprise two pieces of coursework and a written examination.

Design Economics and Cost Planning

The module seeks to help you develop deep understanding of the principles of construction economics and building price estimating and their application in the UK construction context. Emphasis is placed on cost planning techniques based on elemental analysis and the relationship between building morphology and costs. You will develop the ability to critically appraise the use of techniques such as value management, whole-life costing, risk management and bench marking and be able to competently apply the concepts and practice of construction pricing in real-life scenarios. The module is taught by a series of lectures, tutorials and workshops. Assessment is by two pieces of coursework.

Management Consultancy

This module aims to explore theories and applications of management consultancy in the context of delivering corporate objectives. In doing so, the module enables you to gain in depth knowledge of project management principles with emphasis on project programming, planning and control techniques. The subject material further places emphasis on development appraisals and sources of funding enabling you to develop a systematic approach to the preparation of a residual valuation and development appraisal. In the context of this module you will be offered a stimulating experience involving a week-long study visit (field trip) to a major international destination in which you will be expected to apply the knowledge you have gained in this and other modules to a consultancy practice scenario. The module is delivered through a series of lectures, tutorials and simulated role play. Assessment is by two pieces of coursework. Please note the costs of the field trip are not included in your tuition fees.

Research Principles and Application

This module aims to provide you with a sound grounding in research principles and methodologies that are commonly applied within the built environment. Throughout a series of lectures and seminars, supported by tutorials you are encouraged and enabled to develop their critical reasoning powers and to gain practice in researching ideas and knowledge and in the design of relevant research instruments.

Research Project/dissertation

This final module provides you with the opportunity to design and execute an original research ‘capstone' project related to your own discipline specific interests, which synthesises their learning. You will develop a theoretically informed body of work that integrates both theory and practice. It may take the form of a dissertation, practice project, or experiment-based project. Following submission you will present your findings at a Masters Students Event.

You will have the opportunity to study a foreign language, free of charge, during your time at the University as part of the Kingston Language Scheme. Options currently include: Arabic, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

Find out more about Quantity Surveying MSc

We aim to ensure that all courses and modules advertised are delivered. However in some cases courses and modules may not be offered. For more information about why, and when you can expect to be notified, read our Changes to Academic Provision.